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It’s a Goldman World

SHINY Goldman Sachs employees and other visitors under the tilted glass canopy outside a Battery Place Market outlet in the Goldman building.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

MOSTLY nearsightedness. That is the early conclusion drawn by Dr. Veronica Ruelas of the status of Goldman eyes.

Dr. Ruelas has become something of the Goldman Sachs optometrist of choice. It’s the proximity. Late last year, she was installed at the Artsee Eyewear store in the cluster of stylish shops and restaurants beckoning commerce at the back of Goldman’s new Battery Park City headquarters. Goldman people need their vision checked. There she is, right downstairs, with a patient chair in a shade of red known as “American beauty.”

She is an unorthodox optometrist, intermingling yoga and meditation techniques. When she sees patients, especially those with blood pressure or cholesterol issues tested by deals involving several quadrillion dollars, she often shares with them relaxation concepts.

Someone may be in the chair, and she will tell them things like: “Inhale I am ... exhale love.”

When Goldman Sachs, the potent financial services firm, opened its new 43-story, $2.1 billion steel-and-glass headquarters on a former parking lot at 200 West Street in October 2009, it was an area sorely in need of more shops and restaurants. So Goldman, helped along by $1.65 billion worth of tax-exempt Liberty Bonds and an additional $115 million in tax sweeteners, simply created its own.

Fanning out from its headquarters bounded by Vesey and Murray Streets, next to the World Financial Center and a block northwest of ever-rising ground zero, there is now a kind of Goldman village anchored by Goldman Alley, as the locals call the public passageway between Vesey and Murray that’s shielded by a tilted glass canopy.

In this Goldman-enabled world, any of its 8,000 employees can dart downstairs and acquire spicy onion rings at 1 a.m. Or, if the need arises during the day, pick up a Cymbidium orchid. Or grab a bottle of A. Edmond Audry Tres Ancienne Grande Champagne Cognac.

Its location and thick wallet allowed Goldman to assemble its environment as few companies in New York ever have. Since it is a busy user of black cars and cabs, it carved out a driveway in front of its building. It contracted with two parking lots nearby for black cars to sit, keeping them from idling on the street. (Residents say traffic has still worsened.)

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The new Shake Shack.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Goldman employees visiting from out of town must sleep, so the company bought a hotel and then upgraded it to fit its particularities. And when you need a place to park, a good solution is always to buy a parking garage. So Goldman did, acquiring the lease to the public garage at the Riverhouse condominium building nearby. The hotel offers valet parking at the garage.

Goldman occupies another tower across the Hudson River in Jersey City, and owns the pier there. Ferries already plowed back and forth, but Goldman paid the BillyBey Ferry Company to increase frequency to every seven or eight minutes from 6 a.m. to 9:30 p.m. Residents have repeatedly lamented the noise and pollution, so Goldman has built two quieter ferry boats of its own, though they are not yet in service.

Just what effect Goldman’s village will have on the encircling Battery Park City neighborhood remains unclear. It’s still early. Most of the alley has come alive just in recent months, and a couple of spaces await occupants.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth H. Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business group, said: “The sense I have is there’s a buzz. Certainly it’s good for local baby sitters, because more people are going out at night.”

TIMUR GALEN, the global head of corporate services and real estate at Goldman, spearheaded the group that imagined Goldman Alley. In 2006, Goldman bought the 15-story building behind the headquarters location, which contained a midpriced Embassy Suites hotel, a movie theater and dining choices that might fit well in a suburban strip mall. It had a markedly different vision for what would be reborn there.

As Mr. Galen expressed it, Goldman wanted to shift to “what we thought of as the best of New York.” It didn’t rely on chance. “Mostly we went out and invited who we wanted,” he said.

That included Danny Meyer, the prolific New York restaurateur who heads Union Square Hospitality Group, and he opened three restaurants, with his latest outpost of the Shake Shack already a popular attraction on the corner of Murray Street.

Goldman people like wine. Enter the Poulakakos family, whose Wall Street restaurants Goldman knew well. The family opened its first wine store, Vintry Fine Wines, and Harry’s Italian restaurant.

Alan Phillips had three existing restaurants in the acquired building. Goldman was willing to keep one, his Pick a Bagel, and gave him space for two new ones, Wei West, an Asian restaurant, and Beans and Greens, a salad place.

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The rooftop bar at the Conrad hotel.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

Gourmet groceries? Battery Place Market was on the other side of the World Financial Center, and Goldman workers who lived in Battery Park liked it. It was offered an alley spot for a second outlet.

Flowers? Bloom, a luxury uptown florist, was invited down. For eyeglasses, Goldman went to Artsee, with its handmade frames in styles like buffalo horn and surgical steel, and asked it to also find an eye doctor.

The pastry chef François Payard was regularly serving sweets to Goldman executives at other Goldman locations, and so the company gave him the nod to open a bakery.

Goldman’s far-flung employees travel a lot to New York, and many used to stay at the Battery Park Ritz-Carlton until Goldman bought the Embassy Suites and directed them there. They would refer to it as Hotel Goldman. They didn’t adore the place, even with the free all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet.

Also, an Embassy Suites wasn’t really in keeping with the Goldman image or what it felt would excite tourists. It converted the hotel to a Conrad, a higher-end Hilton brand. Goldman owns the hotel, while Hilton runs it. There’s a rooftop Loopy Doopy Bar and a giant ballroom that Goldman uses for events like analyst training classes.

The hotel figures that 10 percent to 25 percent of room nights might be taken by Goldman employees.

The 11-screen Regal theater was something the community liked, even though it rarely seemed excessively busy. The inherited building lease required Goldman to keep it, but the company dismantled its large marquee, and now you have to really hunt for it.

Some local residents were distressed that Goldman eliminated a sports club. Since the company put a fitness center in its headquarters, it didn’t need it.

Salvatore Anzalone used to cut plenty of Goldman hair at his barbershop at 1 New York Plaza, where Goldman had its main equity trading floor. When Goldman moved, the barber tailed along, going into the Embassy Suites building. When the hotel was being renovated, Goldman installed two barber chairs on the mezzanine of its headquarters for Mr. Anzalone to snip only Goldman workers. Now he’s over in the Conrad lobby doing $30 haircuts for all.

Dr. Veronica Ruelas, an optometrist, with Takeko Uemoto, a Goldman employee.Credit
Evan Sung for The New York Times

How are tips?

“Normal,” he said. “A couple of bucks.”

ON a recent morning, Mr. Meyer was touring the alley and talking about how three years ago, when Goldman pitched him, he had no interest. “It was a part of the city I had zero experience with,” he said. “I said, Are we just going to be flapping in the wind down here?”

The pitch convinced him. He proposed putting in a Shake Shack and a Blue Smoke barbecue outpost. Goldman said that wouldn’t be enough. It insisted on a new restaurant, too. And so Mr. Meyer conceived North End Grill, an upscale seafood place.

His belief is that restaurants do better with company. So he called up some fellow restaurant owners to see if they would come down, too. Nope.

Over at Blue Smoke, which sits on Vesey Street, Mr. Meyer pointed out how the blue illuminated barbecue sign was positioned so it could be visible from all floors of the new World Trade Center rising down the street.

“I love watching that go up,” he said. He knelt down and snapped a picture of it with his phone.

He said he had learned that workers at their desks after-hours at Goldman and the various towers typically got a meal voucher of $25. So Blue Smoke offers a $25 takeout dinner.

After the markets close, the Blue Smoke bar is flush with traders. “At 5:02, you have to literally chisel people off the wall,” Mr. Meyer said. The North End bar gets crowded, too, but with higher-grade clientele. “There, it’s a cocktail to contemplate, and here it’s a cocktail to chug,” Mr. Meyer said.

The Goldman Alley businesses know they need all sorts of customers to flourish, but Goldman has been the underpinning. For instance, Carlos Venegas said he had much enjoyed Goldman’s generous vision insurance. He was Artsee’s manager before recently relocating to its Miami Beach store.

A Goldman shopper was debating between two frames the other day as Mr. Venegas checked the insurance, and the Goldman man said, “I think I’m hearing almost free.” Goldman people have constituted about 70 percent of the store’s business.

Artsee also sells artwork, with the currently displayed paintings going for $3,250, none of that price covered by Goldman’s vision plan.

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A line at the ferry terminal at the end of a workday.Credit
Evan Sung for The New York Times

Anthony Roche, the chief operating officer of the Battery Place Market, said 70 percent to 80 percent of his business was Goldman. He set his hours to fit the firm’s rhythms. The market opens at 6 a.m., when some employees are trundling in, and doesn’t close until 1 a.m.

“That’s for the bankers working overnight,” Mr. Roche said. “There’s a rush from 10 at night until 1. They’ll buy some fresh salmon with sides or one of our combo meals.”

Goldman money, though, can go only so far. “We live in the shadow of the Goldman empire, but we have to think beyond Goldman,” Mr. Phillips said. His three restaurants do about 60 percent Goldman business, but he prices for the neighborhood. “People think, Goldman, oh, give me a $32 salad. It’s not that way,” he added. “You have to stay appropriate.”

Vintry Wines has some bottles going for “north of $10,000,” but said most of its sales were $15 to $40 bottles.

Mr. Meyer said he was pleased so far, even drawing “people who live on the Upper East Side who fear they will get the bends if they come down here.”

Mr. Payard thought it was hard for people to find him. He asked Goldman if he could put out an awning, but it said no. He suggested a street fair. “But I can’t say bad things,” he said, “because they will kill me.”

Dr. Ruelas, the optometrist, has been seeing perhaps 15 or 20 patients a week, and had expected 60.

Was this worrying her?

Well it was, but she had other ideas. She was talking to Goldman about maybe holding yoga classes up in the headquarters.

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Mike Martin, the wine director at Vintry Fine Wines, which has some bottles for over $10,000 but is seeing sales mostly for $15 to $40 bottles.Credit
Evan Sung for The New York Times

ON North End Avenue, a couple of blocks from Goldman Alley, sits the Hallmark, a well-appointed retirement residence. One afternoon, three mellow residents — Anita Inglese, 86, Marilyn Amdur, 85, and Joan Ruberti, 81, all widows — talked about the offerings of the alley.

“I’ve been in all the places,” Ms. Amdur said. “One thing that’s good is they put in this long bench. You need to rest sometimes.”

Ms. Ruberti said, “I love it because everything is brand new.”

When word came that Goldman was moving in, there was queasiness among many Battery Park residents.

“We were concerned it would become a commercial dead man’s zone,” said Anthony Notaro, a community leader. “It’s turned out to be the opposite.”

Others, like Rosalie Joseph, a casting director and community leader, continue to be uncomfortable. She likes many of the new places, but said Battery Park “doesn’t feel like a neighborhood anymore. It feels more like Fifth Avenue.” She finds that “after changing the neighborhood, it is difficult to get Goldman engaged with the neighborhood,” adding, “I believe they took away more than they gave.”

Tom Goodkind, an accountant and Battery Park City resident, has been pleased with the changes, also noting of Goldman, “Of course we all want our sons and daughters to work there so we can retire.”

Goldman itself calculated that since 2008 it has showered $76.1 million on community activities in Lower Manhattan. In discussions with Community Board 1, which represents the area but holds no power over Goldman, it agreed to contribute $3.5 million of the $6.7 million cost to build a Battery Park library branch, which opened two years ago, and to chip in $1 million toward the cost of a community center in TriBeCa.

Goldman gave donations like $25,000 last year to the Downtown Little League and the Downtown Soccer League, which play just across Murray Street from the new headquarters.

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ALLEY The Goldman village is anchored by what the locals call Goldman Alley, a passageway between Vesey and Murray Streets.Credit
Chang W. Lee/The New York Times

The Knickerbocker Chamber Orchestra, which performs only in Lower Manhattan, and Poets House, a poetry library, got a joint grant of $31,200 to do a pilot program to perform in schools nearby and hold an event in the World Financial Center. “For an organization like ours, we have to work hard just to raise a couple of thousand dollars,” said Gary Fagin, the orchestra’s director.

They don’t know yet whether Goldman will continue the program.

Which is what residents generally wonder. “It’s like a politician,” said Tammy Meltzer, a local event planner. “They’re there for you when they want your vote. Are they still there once they’re in office?”

The widows of the Hallmark, meanwhile, are satisfied enough, in part for the human contact.

“We get to mingle with the young people, the ones who are sweating it out at their desks,” Ms. Amdur was saying. “They’re very conversant. And they’re very nice. They open the door for you.”

Did she talk with them about the economy, the zigzagging stock market?